23/03/2014

Breaking Bad Season Four

A while back there was a car advert in which all the
separate components of the vehicle had been extracted and laid out as a work of
art. Watching Breaking Bad-
especially this fourth season -reminded me of that advert because everything
slots into place so perfectly. It is a
master class in how to write an ongoing TV drama that is rich with character
and in which each storyline fits together with the others, not always instantly
but eventually. There isn’t an centimetre of waste in these 13 episodes, every
single scene fits necessarily into the larger picture so any review can only
scratch the surface of what is going on. There are people who have tried the
show and given up; the shortest time I heard was someone turning off half way
through the very first episode! Others have reached seasons 3 or 4 and found
the whole thing too heavy. There is, they say, no light and shade in the show,
it’s all hate and no love. In one way this might be true yet ultimately it is a
series about drugs and guns and cartels while also being one about family and
trust and deceit. It’s central premise in case we forget is an ordinary man
faced with mortality making some bad choices and finding a thrill to criminal
life that he never had in his previous ordinary one.

Warning - Big Breaking Bad Spoilers past this point

The other thing about
this show is that it has scenes that people talk about for ages afterwards. One
such scene turns up almost right away at the start of the fourth season. With
Gale lying stone cold dead both Walt and Jess’s life expectancy might just be
measured in minutes when Gus arrives at the lab. Without any emotion at all he
fetches a Stanley knife from a drawer, changes into overalls and pointedly
ignores all of Walt’s reasoned yet increasingly frantic explanations as to what
happened. Then, and this is still without him having said a word, he slits the
throat of one of his henchman who had been spotted at the crime scene. This scene demonstrates a few things. One is
that sometimes characters in other TV shows just talk far too much, especially
if they are villains. The second is that the viewer actually knows neither Walt
not Jesse will die because even avoiding spoilers it’s not possible to avoid
knowing they are in season five. Thirdly it shows the viewer just how immersed
in this world they are. About half way through I realised how the scene was
going to play out and sure Enough it did (even to the point where when Gus is
leaving he says his only line in the entire scene telling Walt and Jesse to get
back to work). If this happened with most series it would be a little
disappointing once the smugness of second guessing correctly was satisfied. Yet
here it took nothing from the sheer power of what was happening; it was still
as riveting and shocking as if I hadn’t guessed. I suppose it means I’m now truly
in the Breaking Bad zone.
That example aside I rarely am able to predict what the show will do next and
that is a good thing. Season Four seems to begin in an even more taut position
that its predecessor but whereas that was mostly danger headed inexorably
towards our two cooks, season four seems to be about the danger from within and
how they can do some second guessing of their own. Walt knows Gus will kill
them sooner or later so buys a gun with the aim of killing his serenely vicious
boss (Giancarlo Esposito, excellent throughout) only to be informed he will
never meet him again. So he drives to his house one night, dons the Heisenberg
hat intending to do the deed there only for his phone to ring when he’s half
way across the street and Gus telling him to turn round and go home. Next he tries to rope Mike into his plans in
a meeting in a dusty bar and ends up being beaten up. This is a masterful cat
and mouse game that plays on Walt’s mind so much he can barely be bothered to
invest time in Skylar’s plans to wrestle ownership of the car wash as a method
to launder all the money.
Skylar is becoming more like Walt this season it seems; her negotiating tactics
failed she resorts to Saul Goodman assisted trickery much to Walt’s
consternation. There’s a great look that Saul throws Walt when he starts to
lecture Skylar on the ethics of what she’s suggesting. Yet you can see that she
too is being drawn into the criminal world, however disapprovingly she has
viewed such matters in past seasons. Later on she resorts to even shadier
tactics to try and absolve herself from being implicated in old boss Ted Beneke‘s
cooked books.
Jesse on the other hand has been numbed by his act of killing Gale. This is a
character who has always shied away from face to face violence in the past; it
is Walt who has always done such deals. Jesse tries to block his trauma with
endless parties and even go kart racing but nothing can quite blot it out.
Though never quite as taciturn as Gus, Jesse does spend the first three
episodes of the seasons saying much less than before and Aaron Paul is able to
convey this so well with the assistance of some interesting camera tricks. Even later in the season when Jesse is
involved in a shootout the camera presents his firing differently to everyone
else as if trying to show us the impact it makes on him. By the end of the
season Jesse has become far more the character we can identify with than Walt.
Jesse’s mood is diverted when he is sent to accompany Gus’ chief fixer Mike on
a series of tasks retrieving money and observing potential rivals. This
development wrong foots both the viewer and Walt who assumes that his lab
partner is being escorted to his death. Instead it sets up a surprisingly
amusing series of sequences that resemble a less verbose version of the
original dynamic between Walt and Jesse. Instead of engaging in argument, Mike
tends to remain silent as Jesse babbles on inaccurately surmising what is
happening. The whole thing is a set up by Gus to drive a wedge between Walt and
Jesse; left alone to cook the former finds the going tough but every measure he
takes to show defiance backfires in one way or another. So the Mike / Jesse
escapades become enjoyable sojourns for us; especially thanks to Jonathan Banks’
marvellous knack of responding to Jesse’s utterances with a pained look of
disinterest. As matters progress though you start to sense some sort of respect
developing from Mike for the younger man whose unusual ideas and boldness does
seem to get results. Whatever the destination this could be a great sitcom
idea!

"Have you noticed how tiny Gus is getting these days?"

The pace of this season is noticeably slower than its
predecessors but this is a slow cooker simmering with intriguing ingredients
any of which could come good. The various strands sometimes appear disparate-
the Whites buying the car wash, Hank’s increasing interest in the case file he
sees, Jesse’s involvement in matters beyond the lab- yet they all come crashing
together in the latter stages with the same kind of skill that marked out the
initial surge of the series. Hank’s doggedness means he discovers Gus has some
connection to the murder and the drugs but he can’t make it stick so involves
Walt- cue some greats scenes with the latter squirming in his seat and nobody
does squirming quite as adeptly than Bryan Cranston!
The slow distancing between Walt and Jesse is particularly interesting as the
series has thus far relied on the vibrant dynamic between them to power
everything else. Yet kept apart for long stretches- and even when they are
together exchanging few pleasantries- gives the season a different tone. It is
clear that Jesse still feels the need to protect Walt to the point where he
threatens to refuse to carry on working for Gus if Walt is killed, something
that at one point seems inevitable. Yet Walt is deceiving and manipulating
Jesse the whole time, something that only becomes apparent in the very last
shot of the season.
At this juncture it seems as if Walter has lost the ability to see people for
what they are and has become so adept at lying that it is second nature to him.
He might even be going slowly mad as one scene that has him react to
approaching doom by laughing maniacally. For all the moments when he seems weary of the
charade- in one scene he tells Hank he won’t justify himself any more to anyone-
he does seem to enjoy the manipulative side of his personality. Having
previously failed to have tried to save Jane and engineered Jesse into killing
Gale, his latest act seems to take his cold heartedness to a new depth. The
interesting thing is that Jesse at first thinks it is him who has poisoned his girlfriend
Andrea’s son and Walt’s utterly convincing (to Jesse and the viewer) denial is
Bryan Cranston at his best. Once again the series thrives as much on something
we don’t see than what we do.
By the season’s last few episodes Jesse has become a more significant player in
Gus’ organisation seemingly by accident and this highlights how he does remain
loyal, even to Mike. Their sojourns mean he becomes a trusted lieutenant even
if his initial act of loyalty is a set up. You can tell by the way first Mike,
then Gus look at Jesse that he has earned their respect and this is something
he has failed to do with most of the other people in his life. In Jesse’s eyes
he is becoming someone now. While Walt’s increasingly frantic attempts to get
him to assassinate Gus never gain traction, Jesse ends up doing the opposite
and twice having to save his new boss from the Cartel. Walt and Jesse end up
literally fighting over all these issues now that Jesse feels he is getting far
more respect from Gus than he is from “Mister White.” What is fascinating for
the viewer of course is that we know this to be true to some extent. Gus knows
too that Jesse is a far less complicated individual to deal with than the
scheming Walt.
Till this point Gus has been a fascinating villain but we know nothing about
him and in a series of crucial flashbacks we learn some of his back story. In
particular we witness how the other original `chicken brother` and his original
cook was slain by the Cartel’s show off head honcho Don Eladio who is big on
respect and killing people in a scene presented as a stylised way beside a
swimming pool and attended by none other than Hector aka the old man with the
bell, though this is pre-bell! The flip side is Gus’ audacious revenge, in the
same location many years later which occurs in episode 10 and marks the moment
when the season breaks out of its slow burn into something more explosive.
What the series final trio of episodes show- though we’re not clear till that
final shot- is that it is Walt who has manipulated a situation that will force both Jesse and Hector to help him
assassinate Gus once and for all. Thus the season finale ends up centring
around an old people’s home which sounds bizarre on paper. Gus’s demise is such
a shockingly stylish thing. After an explosion has surely killed him he walks
out of the room adjusting his tie, his fastidious qualities remaining till the
end. It’s only when the camera moves around to the other side of his face that
we know his reign is over.
The precision involved in the writing of this season is peerless. You might
quibble occasionally at something only for it to become clear how much sense it
makes several episodes later. For example I wondered why we were spending so
long on Skylar and the car wash and the need to bring back her former boss only
for it to slide into place as a crucial element at the climax. Hank’s endless
obsession with Gus turns out to be a tool with which Walt is able to engineer
Fring’s eventual demise. As for Hector and his bell; well will the series be
the same without it? In every nuance of this fourth season Vince Gilligan and
his writers have created something to be both admired and enjoyed. Somehow- and
you’d probably need to watch this series several times to work out just how-
they have made us root for one of the nastiest, conniving, disloyal and vicious
characters ever to front a TV series. Yet still after all he’s done, we want
Walter White to win.